I had a love/hate relationship with this course. In elementary school and high school, I had been an avid reader, and also at times a writer. I always found it easy to put words on pages, and enjoyed making characters, creating storylines and providing details to a creation of my own. At one point I even dabbled in poetry:
Hiaku’s were the choice,
Can’t say I was ever any good
At least I didn’t rhyme
That is what initially drew me to this creative writing class. I didn’t really know what to expect – but I know what I got was also not what I anticipated. It involved the studying and consideration of many authors: Virginia Woolf is the only one I can recall from the top of my head. I bought the book and still have it on my bookshelf in my parents’ home. I feel like the class content gave me the base knowledge of author’s that any self-respecting writer should possess. So, the lectures weren’t about how to write creatively per se, but other people’s creative writing. This was not my ideal scenario.
On the bright side, I was in love with my seminar group. Directly following lecture I would go down the hall to a small seminar room where our professor would lead our seminar conversations. I felt lucky because my seminar was the only seminar that our professor ran – and she ran it well. It was thoughtful and engaging discussion, and I vividly recall sharing of my own writing as well as books I found personally interesting or impactful with the other individuals in that room. Considering I was fairly shy and didn’t like to raise my hand at all in any classes, actively contributing to this seminar was a different stroke for me. Easily my favorite seminar of all my first year, maybe all my university career.
The last comment I will make on this course is that I did like the assignments. I specifically remember one assignment, in which we were tasked to go on a walk and describe what we saw. I did not go on the walk. Instead, I sat at my large desk in my dorm room, looked out my window and thought about all the walks I did across campus on a daily basis. Please no one tell Samantha Bernstein, she gave me such a good mark. I distinctly remembering being very proud of a phrase in my text “INSERT HERE HAVE TO GO BACK AND FIND IT”. The professor even commented on what a great phrase/description it was. Although creative writing didn’t necessarily spark me to become an author, or write extensive, detailed stories as I did in my childhood, I could still find a lot of pride and fulfillment in a well written text. I knew being an author of novels was no longer my career path, but I was glad to know I still got enjoyment out of writing, and was pretty good at it (or at least decent enough to pass the class with a good mark).